India's Forest Conservation Amendment Act raises important questions

Of the planet's terrestrial area, nearly 33% and 7% are covered by forests and tropical forests, respectively (Lee and Jarvis 1996). Forests in general provide ecological, economic, social, and aesthetic benefits to people, and tropical forests specifically hold more than 50% of the planet's biodiversity (Singh and Sharma 2009). Worldwide, 15.8 million hectares of tropical forests are lost annually (Weisse and Goldman 2018). Nearly all tropical forests occur within the Global South, which includes some of the most densely populated and economically impoverished nations. The growing need for forest resources in developing countries places tremendous strain on forests therein. India is one example of a country that exerts such pressure on its forests (Figure 1). In India, total (tropical and subtropical) forest and tree cover spans 80.9 million hectares, which is equivalent to nearly 25% of the country's areal extent (Sharma et al. 2023). Between 2015 and 2020, India lost 668,400 hectares of forest, placing it second to Brazil in terms of global losses (Ritchie 2021). Various laws, acts, and policies have been formulated and adopted in India to incorporate forests within legal and policy frameworks—these range from the colonial-era Indian Forest Act of 1865 to the more recent Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 (hereafter, the Act), which modified the existing Forest Conservation Act of 1980. Since its inception, the Act has prompted many conservation-related questions across the world. More discussions and greater transparency on the Act are desperately needed.

In India, government land records generally refer to forests as belonging to one of three legal classifications: “reserved”, “protected”, or “unclassed” (FAO 2005). Reserved and protected forests “by definition are owned by [the] government [and by the] ‘Public’ at large”; as for unclassed forests, “the status of their ownership and control varies among various States in India” (FAO 2005). Many Indian forests are further categorized as “deemed” forests: that is, those that fall under the “dictionary meaning” of a forest (a subjective description) but do not merit official recognition in any government record. The Act rescinds protection completely for deemed forests, limiting protection only to “notified” forests (that is, reserved and protected forests for which there is “a legal notification in a government gazette under [the] Indian Forest Act [of 1927 that] creates or defines [their] boundaries” [FAO 2005]) and those documented in official records as of or after 25 October 1980. The Act encourages commercial activity in any area not officially acknowledged as a “forest”. As a consequence, up to 25% of the country's forests are now vulnerable to mining, urbanization, infrastructure development, and other destructive land-use changes due to the passage of the Act, which eliminates former protections granted to deemed forests by the Supreme Court's Godavarman judgement of 1996 (Tatpati and Pathak-Broome 2015). About 25% of India's forests are located in the isolated, mountainous parts of northeastern India, which make up only 8% of the country's total area (Forest Report 2021). These forested areas are rich in floral and faunal biodiversity and endemism. However, almost half of these forests are neither officially classified nor recorded as forests. Most of the forests in these areas occur on privately or communally owned lands managed by traditional institutions, such as village councils. Consequently, according to the Act, the government offers no protection to these forested areas, which are now subject to activities that could result in their degradation and destruction.

The Act also opens all forested areas within 100 km of India's international borders to development from “strategic projects of national importance and concerning national security”. As a result, numerous Indigenous populations and other communities residing in forested regions within this zone will likely face major challenges in exercising their rights as outlined in the Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA). Although the FRA acknowledges the rights to forest resources for tribal communities living in the forest and for other traditional forest inhabitants, the new Act ignores Indigenous people and their rights.

According to India's constitution, the central government and states have equal power over managing the nation's forests. However, the Act contradicts the idea of decentralized forest governance. Under the Act, the states have less power and authority over forests. Currently, selected activities within forests—such as ecotourism, establishment of zoo/safari parks, and research surveys—are allowed without prior permission or authorization from state governments.

In addition, the Act upholds compensatory afforestation and encourages private individuals and organizations, including major corporations, to conduct afforestation or restoration. However, India's compensatory afforestation policy does not adhere to the internationally recognized principles of ecological restoration (IUCN/SSC 2013) considered as best practices. Afforestation and restoration initiatives in India have numerous challenges, such as inadequate community participation, inappropriate site selection, preference for hardy species, low sapling survival, and insufficient monitoring (Tambe et al. 2022). The Act prioritizes afforestation and restoration to achieve India's carbon targets, which include sequestering 2.5–3 billion metric tons of carbon by 2030. However, this outcome is impractical because most of the country's restoration projects to date have been considered as failures (Duguma et al. 2020; Asher and Bhandari 2021). For instance, in an afforestation effort in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, substantial money was spent without obtaining substantial benefits (Rana et al. 2022). Large-scale tree-planting initiatives are frequently unsuccessful, wasting limited funding and sequestering negligible carbon (Duguma et al. 2020). The Government of India's flagship program, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), aims to reforest and restore landscapes to compensate for the amount of forest cover lost as a result of large-scale infrastructure construction (including hydropower projects) and other industrial endeavors. So far, the CAMPA program has spent billions of dollars without considering social, economic, or biophysical contexts (Asher and Bhandari 2021).

India's remaining forests are valuable, but India's federal laws must provide the most protection because all forests are subject to federal control. Notably, the Peruvian government recently passed a similar act, which loosened the country's deforestation restrictions; thus, this issue is not limited to a single country or continent. According to Article 48A of the Indian constitution, the federal government is responsible for the “protection and improvement of [the] environment and safeguarding of forests and wildlife”. As a result, policy makers should act responsibly, making laws and amendments that benefit forest conservation.